In May, Atlanta’s new Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown welcomed its first patients. The 17-story, 450,000-sf facility adds inpatient, outpatient, and research facilities to Emory University Hospital Midtown and Winship Cancer Institute.
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and May Architecture, the facility includes comprehensive oncology facilities—including inpatient beds, surgical capacity, infusion treatment, outpatient clinics, diagnostic imaging, linear accelerators, and areas for wellness, rehabilitation, and clinical research.
To design the facility, SOM and May Architecture used a highly collaborative process involving more than 160 stakeholders across Winship’s leadership, patients, clinicians, volunteers, staff, and construction teams.
The building features two-story care communities, each focused on a specific type of cancer. Services typically distributed throughout a hospital are instead organized into one-stop destinations that combine exam, consultation, infusion, and supportive functions.
These care communities reduce or eliminate patients’ waiting times. In addition, they bring fellow patients and families together and allow specialists to visit both inpatients and outpatients without having to leave the two floors.
The care communities informed the exterior’s two-story façade increments. The building’s transparent storefront welcomes patients and visitors with a drop-off valet area that leads into the main lobby. Amenities throughout the building include a retail boutique, pharmacy, wellness center, cafe, and multipurpose spaces for future offerings of yoga, music therapy, education, and art therapy.
Thanks to an energy-efficient design, the Winship Cancer Institute will expend 40% less energy annually than the average Atlanta hospital, according to a press statement. The building also features energy-efficient recovery mechanical equipment, with chilled beams and direct-outside air units. The high-performance facade optimizes glazing and window-to-wall ratios. And water use is reduced through the collection of stormwater for irrigation and chiller plants.
On the Building Team:
Owner: Emory University Healthcare
Architect and structural engineer: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
Clinical architect: May Architecture
MEP and lighting: Newcomb & Boyd
Civil engineering and landscape design: Kimley-Horn
Construction manager: Batson-Cook Construction
Related Stories
| Oct 15, 2014
Harvard launches ‘design-centric’ center for green buildings and cities
The impetus behind Harvard's Center for Green Buildings and Cities is what the design school’s dean, Mohsen Mostafavi, describes as a “rapidly urbanizing global economy,” in which cities are building new structures “on a massive scale.”
| Oct 13, 2014
Debunking the 5 myths of health data and sustainable design
The path to more extensive use of health data in green building is blocked by certain myths that have to be debunked before such data can be successfully incorporated into the project delivery process.
| Oct 12, 2014
AIA 2030 commitment: Five years on, are we any closer to net-zero?
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the American Institute of Architects’ effort to have architecture firms voluntarily pledge net-zero energy design for all their buildings by 2030.
| Oct 8, 2014
Massive ‘healthcare village’ in Nevada touted as world’s largest healthcare project
The $1.2 billion Union Village project is expected to create 12,000 permanent jobs when completed by 2024.
| Oct 3, 2014
Designing for women's health: Helping patients survive and thrive
In their quest for total wellness, women today are more savvy healthcare consumers than ever before. They expect personalized, top-notch clinical care with seamless coordination at a reasonable cost, and in a convenient location. Is that too much to ask?
| Sep 29, 2014
10 common deficiencies in aging healthcare facilities
VOA's Douglas King pinpoints the top issues that arise during healthcare facilities assessments, including missing fire/smoke dampers, out-of-place fire alarms, and poorly constructed doorways.
| Sep 25, 2014
Look to history warily when gauging where the construction industry may be headed
Precedents and patterns may not tell you all that much about future spending or demand.
| Sep 24, 2014
Architecture billings see continued strength, led by institutional sector
On the heels of recording its strongest pace of growth since 2007, there continues to be an increasing level of demand for design services signaled in the latest Architecture Billings Index.
| Sep 23, 2014
Cedars-Sinai looks to streamline trauma care with first-of-its-kind OR360 simulation space
The breakthrough simulation center features moveable walls and a modular ceiling grid that allow doctors and military personnel to easily reconfigure the shape and size of the space.
| Sep 22, 2014
4 keys to effective post-occupancy evaluations
Perkins+Will's Janice Barnes covers the four steps that designers should take to create POEs that provide design direction and measure design effectiveness.
